Source,
form, redaction and narrative criticism methods comprise the gist of
modern and post-modern literary analysis of the gospel books. They
all seem to look past Jesus as Lord and to other things involving
composition and theories about historical development of the books.
While adumbrating new tools for regarding the gospels and perhaps
increasing knowledge about it they may make operating assumptions
about the books that are for-themselves unsupported.
The same problems that modern tools of literary analysis of the gospel produce have arisen before in a somewhat analogous fashion in theology. Early on in the field of what is now called Christology disputes arose about the nature of Jesus Christ. Was he fully man yet fully God, was he co-eternal as the Son before his human appearance etc. such problems of interpretation in the generations following the first generation of Christians led to various schools of thought such as Monophysitism arising that were resolved at the highest levels. Unfortunately the application of historical generalities such as ‘history is written by the victors’ leads some to view history in an incorrect way-as if there was always just one surviving and authorized version of history being written and buried like the Dead Sea Scrolls by victors. The Qumran scrolls of the Old Testament were written by a community that was slaughtered by Romans. It is hard either to say that the first couple of centuries of Christian history were notable for military or civil victory. It was a spiritual victory that was won as the liberating reality of the Lord Jesus Christ became known and the ways of venal paganism were dropped by ordinary people.
The same problems that modern tools of literary analysis of the gospel produce have arisen before in a somewhat analogous fashion in theology. Early on in the field of what is now called Christology disputes arose about the nature of Jesus Christ. Was he fully man yet fully God, was he co-eternal as the Son before his human appearance etc. such problems of interpretation in the generations following the first generation of Christians led to various schools of thought such as Monophysitism arising that were resolved at the highest levels. Unfortunately the application of historical generalities such as ‘history is written by the victors’ leads some to view history in an incorrect way-as if there was always just one surviving and authorized version of history being written and buried like the Dead Sea Scrolls by victors. The Qumran scrolls of the Old Testament were written by a community that was slaughtered by Romans. It is hard either to say that the first couple of centuries of Christian history were notable for military or civil victory. It was a spiritual victory that was won as the liberating reality of the Lord Jesus Christ became known and the ways of venal paganism were dropped by ordinary people.
It
is important for Christians not to be overly influenced by the
profusion of cultured despirers of Christianity in academia and
science today armed with tools of existential analysis and confusion
about the content of written history and what it means. Most likely
the first century Christians that wrote the gospels were all
well-acquainted and talked with one another about the life of the
Lord-what more likely activity were the disciples and Apostles to do
in the decade or two following the death and resurrection of the
Lord? They were practical men and women who knew the Lord and applied
his teaching to their new community. Luke, the writer of the book of
Acts, confirms the existence of an early church at Jerusalem.
Stephen, James, Peter, Paul, John-Mark and Matthew knew one another
and probably talked over the main points of the life and ministry of
Jesus Christ repeatedly. Some of the gospels were written down for
particular communities perhaps simply to survive persecution in
Jerusalem.
After Peter had left for Rome I think, James-the brother
of Jesus was thrown from the temple mount and then beaten to death
with clubs. He must have been a tough guy. Peter may have ordered his
amanuensis Mark to write down a gospel for the Romans to survive his
possible forthcoming death. Matthew the tax collector and disciple
wrote a beautiful theologically inspired gospel account for the Jews
and Luke the physician, perhaps encouraged by Peter and Paul wrote
one as well in his excellent Greek. The disciple John, the
independent, irascible follower of the Lord who had moved to Ephesus
perhaps sensing the approaching Roman invasion and destruction of
Jerusalem, wrote his own account of the life and meaning of the life
of Jesus Christ.
John’s
account is theologically inspired and there is no substantial reason
to doubt its veracity. Ephesus was a city at a main point of trade
crossing east and west. The church at Ephesus was well established
and Paul must have talked with John there or earlier in Jerusalem.
The early Christians and early church knew one another in that
smaller world of the first century though there were 200 million
human beings alive. Failing to comprehend history as skillfully as
some post-modernist have achieved is an age-of-fracture intellectual
anemia. One could read the Civil War by Julius Caesar and doubt that
he wrote it and use several methods of literary analysis to prove the
point. He did have a Lieutenant write a part of it for him-on the
Spanish War I seem to recall, so why not the rest? In fact couldn’t
it have been just a fiction? The reality of the composition of that
book might be visualized in a better way I think.
Narrative
criticism methods regard the gospel implicitly as if it had not
historical correspondence. One could do that with any written
material including the U.S. constitution, in which case it would be
called legislating from the bench. The founders today would support
concentration of wealth and the elimination of taxes on the rich-less
than strict constructionism.
The
gospel is not the story of Über-Mouse, super-hero tycoon of Wall
Street, Super Bowling and The Nation of Cheeseburger who drank deeply from a cast off old bottle of Myrtle's special steroid formula suddenly transformed into Über-mouse with a star of his/her/its own on Broadway’s sidewalk of N.Y.
stars. Narrative analysis is a legitimate method yet its application
needs to be judiciously applied if one wants to keep a semblance of
accuracy for analysis. It was fair to criticize the manifesto of the
Unibomber on a narrative literary basis though it corresponded to
actual works of an individual too concerned with the mass extinction
of life on Earth. One can judge the danger levels of global warming,
habitat loss and mass extinction by the percentage of Americans that
don’t really want to own a fossil fuel burning car-about 1 or 2%.
If Americans don’t care about it then it’s no problem. If a
narrative approach to the gospel brings one to disregard the
historical reality of the appearance of the Lord of the Universe on
Earth and the one chance for salvation unto eternal life that is
worse than failing to comprehend the reality of the Anthropocene era
of mass extinction .
Following is an excerpt from Louis Berkhof's public domain work 'An Introduction to the New Testament' ...
Berkhof
writes in Introduction to
the New Testament-
quote-“In the first
place the general plan of these Gospels exhibits a remarkable
agreement. Only Matthew and
Luke contain a narrative of the infancy of our Lord and their
accounts of it are quite distinct; but the
history of Christs public ministry follows very much the same order
in all the Synoptics. They
treat successively of the Lords preparation for the ministry, John
the Baptist, the baptism, the
temptation, the return to Galilee, the preaching in its villages and
cities, the journey to Jerusalem, the
entrance into the Holy City, the preaching there, the passion and the
resurrection.
The details that
fit into this general plan are also arranged in quite a uniform
manner, except in some places,
especially of the first Gospel. The most striking differences in the
arrangement of the material results
from the narrative of a long series of events connected with the
Galilean ministry, which is peculiar
to Matthew and Mark, Matt. 14:22— 16:12; Mark 6: 45—8: 26; and
from the history of another
series of events related to the journey to Jerusalem that is found
only in Luke 9:
51—18:14.
But there is not
only similarity in the broad outlines of those Gospels; the
particular incidents that are narrated
are also in many cases the same in substance and similar if not
identical in form. The amount of
agreement that we find in this respect is represented by Norton,
Genuineness of the Gospels p. 373, and
by Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels p. 201, in the
following manner: If the
total contents of the Gospel is represented by 100, the following
result is obtained:
Mark has 7
peculiarities and—93 coincidences
Matthew has 42
peculiarities and—58 coincidences
Luke has 59
peculiarities and—41 coincidences
If the extent of
all the coincidences be represented by 100 their proportionate
distribution will
be:
Matthew, Mark and
Luke 53
Matthew and Luke 21
Matthew and Mark 20
Mark and Luke 6
Still another
estimate, viz, that by verses, is suggested by Reuss, History of the
New Testament,
I p. 177:
Matthew out of a
total of 971 verses has 330 peculiar to him.
Mark out of a total
of 478 verses has 68 peculiar to him.
Luke out of a total
of 1151 verses has 541 peculiar to him.
The first two have
170 to 180 verses that are lacking in Luke; Matthew and Luke, 230 to
240 wanting in Mark;
Mark and Luke about 50 wanting in Matthew. The number common to all
three
is 330 to 370.
The preceding
statements refer to the subject-matter of the Synoptics. Taken by
itself this might give us an
exaggerated idea of the similarity of these Gospels. As a corrective
it is necessary to bear in mind that
the verbal coincidences, though they are remarkable indeed, are
nevertheless considerably less
than one would expect. Dr. Schaff and his son, after some
calculations based on Rushbrookes
Synopticon, get the following results:
“The proportion
of words peculiar to the Synoptics is 28,000 out of 48,000, more than
one-half.
In Matthew 56 words
out of every 100 are peculiar.
In Mark 40 words
out of every 100 are peculiar.
In Luke 67 words
out of every 100 are peculiar.
The number of
coincidences common to all three is less than the number of
divergences.
Matthew agrees with
the other two gospels in 1 word out of 7.
Mark agrees with
the other two gospels in 1 word out of 4½.
Luke agrees with
the other two gospels in 1 word out of 8.
But comparing the
Gospels two by two, it is evident that Matthew and Mark have most in
common, and Matthew
and Luke are most divergent.
One-half of Mark is
found in Matthew.
One-fourth of Luke
is found in Matthew.
One-third of Mark
is found in Luke.
The general
conclusion from these figures is that all three Gospels widely
diverge from the common matter, or
triple tradition, Mark the least so and Luke the most (almost twice
as much as Mark). On the other
hand, both Matthew and Luke are nearer Mark than Luke and Matthew to
each other.” Church
History, I p. 597.
In connection with
the preceding we should bear in mind that these verbal agreements are greatest, not in
the narrative, but in the recitative parts of the Gospels. About one
fifth of them is found in the
narrative portion of the Gospel, and four fifths in the recital of
the words of our Lord and others. This
statement will create a false impression, however, unless we bear in
mind the proportion in which
the narrative parts stand to the recitative element, which is as
follows:
Narrative
Recitative
Matthew 25 75
Mark 50 50
Luke 34 66
From what has now
been said it is perfectly clear that the Synoptics present an
intricate literary problem. Is it
possible to explain the origin in such a manner that both the
resemblances and differences are
accounted for? During the last century many scholars have applied
themselves with painstaking
diligence to the arduous task of solving this problem. The solution
has been sought along different
lines; several hypotheses have been broached, of which we shall name
only the four most important
ones.
In the first place
there is what has been called (though not altogether correctly) ~the
mutual dependance theory
(Benutzungshypothese, Augustine, Bengel, Bleek, Storr). According to
this theory the one
Gospel is dependent on the other, so that the second borrowed from
the first and the third from both the first and the second. On this
theory, of course, six permutations are possible
viz.:
Matthew, Mark,
Luke.
Matthew, Luke,
Mark.
Mark, Matthew,
Luke.
Mark, Luke,
Matthew.
Luke, Matthew,
Mark.
Luke, Mark,
Matthew.
In every possible
form this theory has found defenders, but it does not meet with great
favor at present. True, it
seems to account for the general agreement in a very simple manner
but serious difficu1ties arise
when one seeks to determine which one of the Gospels was first, which
second and which third.
This is perfectly evident from the difference of opinion among the
adherents of this hypothesis.
Again it fails to account for the divergencies; it does not explain
why one writer adopts the language
of his predecessor(s) up to a certain point, and then suddenly
abandons it. Of late it is tacitly
admitted, however, that it does contain an element of truth.
In the second place
the hypothesis of oral tradition (Traditions-hypothese, Gieseler,
Westcott, Wright), should be
mentioned. is theory starts from the supposition that the Gospel
existed first of all in an unwritten
form. It is assumed that the apostles repeatedly told the story of
Christs life, dwelling especially
on the most important incidents of his career, and often reiterating
the very words of their
blessed Lord. These narratives and words were eagerly caught up by
willing ears and treasured in
faithful and retentive memories, the Jews making it a practice to
retain whatever they learnt in the
exact form in which they received it. Thus a stereotyped tradition
arose which served as the basis
for our present Gospels. Several objections have been urged against
this theory. It is said that, as a result of the apostles preaching
in the vernacular, the oral tradition was embodied in the Aramaic
language, and hence cannot account for the verbal coincidences in the
Greek Gospels.
Again it is urged
that the more stereotyped the tradition was, the harder it becomes to
account for the differences
between the Synoptics. Would anyone be apt to alter such a tradition
on his own authority? Moreover
this hypothesis offers no explanation of the existence of the
two-fold, the triple and the
double tradition, i. e. the tradition that is embodied in all three
of the Gospels and that which is found
only in two of them. The majority of scholars have now abandoned this
theory, although it has
ardent defenders even at present. And no doubt, it must be taken into
account in the solution of this problem.
In the third place
we have the hypothesis of one primitive Gospel
(Urevangeliums-Hypothese)
from which all
three of the Synoptists drew their material. According to G.
E.Lessing this Gospel,
containing a short
account of the life of Jesus for the use of traveling missionaries,
was written in
the popular
language of Palestine. Eichhorn, however, following him, held that it
was translated
into Greek, worked
over and enriched in various ways, and soon took shape in several
redactions,
which became the
source of our present Gospels. There is very little agreement among,
the defenders of this theory regarding the exact character of this
original source. At present it finds little favor in scientific
circles, but has been discarded for various reasons. There is
absolutely no trace of such an original Gospel, nor any historical
reference to it, which seems peculiar in view of its unique
significance. And if the existence of such a source be postulated,
how must the arbitrary alteration of it be explained, how did these
different recensions come into existence. It is evident that by this
theory the problem is not solved, but simply shifted to another
place. Moreover while in its original form this hypothesis accounted
very well for the agreement, but not for the differences found in the
Synoptics, in its final form it was too artificial and too
complicated to inspire confidence and to seem anything like a natural
solution of the Synoptic problem.
In the fourth place
the so-called double source, or two document theory
(Combinations-hypothese,
Weisse, Wilke,
Holtzmann, Wendt) deserves mention since it is the favorite theory of
New Testament scholars today. This hypothesis holds that, in order to
explain the phenomena of the Gospels, it is necessary to postulate
the existence of at least two primitive documents, and recognizes the
use of one Gospel in the composition of the others. The form in which
this theory is most widely accepted at present is the following: The
Gospel of Mark was the first one to be written and, either in the
form in which we now have it, or in a slightly different form was the
source of the triple tradition.
For the double
tradition, which is common to Matthew and Luke, these writers used a
second source that, for want of definite knowledge regarding it, is
simply called Q (from the German Quelle). This Q may have been the
λόγια of Matthew mentioned by Papias, and was probably a
collection of the sayings of our Lord. The differences between
Matthew and Luke in the matter of the double tradition finds its
explanation in the assumption that, while Matthew drew directly from
Q, Luke derived the corresponding matter from Q and other sources, or
from a primitive Gospel based on Q.”-end
quote
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